We slowly wound our way up into the hills, passing small farms and men chopping wood in the hot sun, and then what had been a leisurely, winding path became a climb. The trail took a sharp 60-70 degree angle upward, across rain-slick rock face with little in the way of footholds, and I immediately understood what the man at the Ovalau Tours office had tried to tell me. One misstep, and I’d bounce most of the way down to Levuka. I asked George if he thought it was safe to go on, and he cocked his head to one side, thinking.
“Yeah, I think so. We can make it,” he assured me, smiling confidently, and then turned and clambered up another stretch of rock.
Holding worries at bay as best I could, I scrambled after, trying to put my sandaled feet where his had been. Soon the rock gave way to mud, and we both clawed our way up one vertical mudslide after another. I slipped and slid, making only a foot’s progress for every five feet of effort. After a little while, I looked like the loser at the title match of the World Mudwrestling Championships. Frustrated, I finally decided to emulate George, who climbed as easily as if he were walking up a paved street (and who every once in a while had to stop so I could catch up).
I stepped back to observe his technique for a bit. Rather than claw and dig in the mud like I’d been, George splayed his feet out to both sides like a duckwalking skier, and grabbed hold of whatever roots, grasses, or branches presented themselves. Fighting our way through a real-live tropical rainforest, I was a bit paranoid about doing the same, but it didn’t seem to worry him a bit.
Despite what many tourists think, Fiji is probably one of the safest places in the world, animal-wise. Where I come from, when you camp you have to watch out for territorial bears and hungry big cats, but Fiji has no large predators, no truly dangerous insects, and only one kind of deadly snake, the dadakulaci, or banded sea krait. Sharks, jellyfish, stonefish, barracudas, and the like make offshore Fiji more hazardous (you never pick up a cone shell unless you’re sure it’s uninhabited, for example), but life on land is relatively safe.
After watching George, I humped on up the mudslide, using grass and roots for handholds, and made better progress, but it was still rough going. I asked George if he was sure this was the way up, and he said it was, but that it wasn’t usually all mud; it was simply that I’d been so stupid as to want to climb after a solid week of rain.
Halfway up (or so I guessed, at any rate), I stopped again, ankle-deep in muck, to catch my breath and look around. The trees had thinned a bit, and the hillside swung out below us, lush and green. The village was obscured by the trees, but George pointed out plantations on the opposite side of the valley. He picked out certain spots, different shades of green, as different crops – taro, yams, and cassava.
The reverie was interrupted by a sharp pain in my leg. I looked down to see huge black ants, some of which had climbed up onto me and started biting, swarming everywhere. While I yelped and jumped to get away, George stood on higher ground and laughed.
“Watch out for the big ants, they really hurt,” he warned, smiling, then continued up to the summit.
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View from The Peak
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At the top, we forced our way through thick, thorny brambles and broke out into sunshine. We made our way over to the edge, the sheer cliff that faced the town, and looked out, surveying the island. Some intrepid soul before us had stuck a makeshift flag in among the rocks, a red bandanna tied to a stick, and beyond that the small town of Levuka lay spread out like a map.
Green-covered volcanic islands loomed offshore, the deep blue-black water in-between cut by swathes of bright, almost glowing, blue – coral reefs, lying just below the surface of the water like submerged continents, their edges marked by the white spray of breaking waves. We were a long way up.
On our other side, I couldn’t see much past the other mountains along the edge of the island, but we sat dead-level with those, their peaks looking only a quick hop away. George pointed out a big, rounded mountain, the next one over.
“That one is called King Kong. You see it?” he asked. “Next time you come here, I take you up there.”
Read Part 3